Reform UK’s plans for a crackdown on houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) as an anti-asylum move could backfire by squeezing housing supply, a party councillor has warned.
Placing asylum seekers – including those who have arrived via small boats – in multi-bedroom houses in towns and cities across the UK has been lambasted by Nigel Farage’s party.
Reform MP Lee Anderson has said HMO landlords were buying up “cheap terraced houses” and “filling our streets full of wrong ’uns”.
Farage promised during the recent local election campaign that “bloody-minded” Reform councils will stand up against HMOs by using planning controls.
Reform’s Makerfield by-election candidate Robert Kenyon – looking to beat both Labour’s Andy Burnham and right-wing rivals Restore – has pledged to block new HMOs to stop “illegal migrants being dumped” next door to “decent families”.
However, landlords fear that a wide-ranging crackdown on HMOs will squeeze supply for professionals and students. It will drive up rents and create more homelessness, they have argued.
Asylum HMOs can see ‘breakdown in community cohesion’
Wendy Whittaker-Large – a Reform councillor for Alsager Town Council in Cheshire – has her own portfolio of HMO properties in North England, renting them to professionals.
She shares her party’s concerns about asylum seekers living in HMOs in “high concentrations” in some parts of Britain.
“It can create more pressure on local services, and a breakdown in community cohesion,” she told The i Paper. “Because they are not able to work, [asylum seekers] hanging around in the streets can be a problem.”
Wendy Whittaker-Large owns multiple HMO properties. She believes HMOs can be both ‘affordable’ and ‘done to a very high standard’However, she warned that attempts by councillors to use Article 4 direction orders to block new HMOs will backfire by hitting landlords who want to rent to UK citizens.
Reform-run Durham County Council has led the way with its widespread planning crackdown – imposing an Article 4 direction order across the whole borough last year.
This order requires landlords to seek planning permission to convert traditional family homes into HMOs, giving councils the power to refuse.
Crackdown is ‘sledgehammer to crack a nut’
Using Article 4 against property owners is a “sledgehammer to crack a nut”, said Whittaker-Large, who runs the HMO Action Group.
“If you crack down on HMOs, you will see more homelessness, more people turning up to councils for emergency help,” she said. “You will see higher rents and a lowering in quality, because there will be less competition.”
HMOs can be both “affordable” and “done to a very high standard,” she added. “Many people value these properties because they like living with other people. They like the simplicity of all the bills being included in one payment.”
Whittaker-Large is “very worried” that councillors do not understand her sector and will use Article 4 as a “de facto ban on new HMOs”.
“Reform councillors, like the wider public, may not understand the unintended consequences. If you squeeze supply that’s needed, where do people live?”
New planning class for asylum accommodation?
Whittaker-Large wants her party to get behind her proposal: a brand-new planning class specifically for asylum accommodation.
Using legislation to create a new planning class would let councils stop new HMOs specifically for use by the Home Office’s asylum housing contractors.
The targeted approach would not affect HMO conversions aimed at professionals and students.
Andy Burnham, left, and Reform’s Makerfield candidate Robert Kenyon, who has vowed to crack down on HMOs (Photos: Ryan Jenkinson/Getty)“It will give local residents a voice to say to their councils, ‘It’s not suitable here’,” said Whittaker-Large on asylum HMOs. “It would help councils control use of hotels for asylum accommodation too.”
The Cheshire councillor has written to Reform deputy leader Richard Tice and others in her party about her plan.
“I hope the party will listen. I think there is a solution to this problem which Reform hasn’t considered.”
‘We don’t want unrest and the violence’
Rioters in Belfast are believed to have targeted the homes of immigrants – regardless of their legal status – during last week’s outbreak of violence.
It followed a knife attack in the city, which saw a Sudanese national charged with attempted murder. Three Pakistani-born students, in the UK legally on study visas, told The Sunday Times that their home was firebombed in the ensuing riots.
“We don’t want to see the unrest and the violence we’ve seen [in Northern Ireland], which is wrong,” said Whittaker-Large.
“But we have to do something about asylum seekers living in high concentrations in some areas [of the UK].”
Vehicles set on fire by rioters in Belfast (Photo: PA)Almost 73,000 asylum seekers live in “dispersal accommodation” – homes within communities across the country – according to Home Office statistics for 2025.
But the figures do not break down how many HMOs were used by the property owners signing long-term asylum rental contracts with Home Office contractors such as Serco and Mears.
Even if the vast majority of these homes are HMOs, it would still represent a small proportion of the 497,000 HMOs estimated to exist in total across England and Wales.
A Reform spokesman acknowledged that there is “a place for well-run HMOs within the affordable housing sector for British citizens”.
“What there is no place for is packing them with illegal migrants or recently granted asylum seekers with no care,” he added.
Asked about Whittaker-Large’s idea for a new, asylum-based planning class, the Reform spokesman said: “We welcome councillors putting forward ideas, particularly in areas where they have expertise.”
A Home Office spokesperson said the Government was “removing incentives” for asylum seekers to come to the UK by moving more of them into “basic accommodation” like former military sites.
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